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After two years in which she took no position on the Common Core State Standards, education historian Diane Ravitch posted a blog Tuesday in which she says she cannot support the common core. Among her concerns, she writes, is that the program hasn't been piloted to show evidence it will be effective. "While I cannot support the Common Core standards, I will remain open to new evidence," she writes.

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After two years in which she took no position on the Common Core State Standards, education historian Diane Ravitch posted a blog Tuesday in which she says she cannot support the common core. Among her concerns, she writes, is that the program hasn't been piloted to show evidence it will be effective. "While I cannot support the Common Core standards, I will remain open to new evidence," she writes.

Peer coaching is a way to help teachers grow and improve through professional development, National Board Certified Teacher Anthony S. Colucci writes in this blog post. Among the benefits, he notes, is that peer coaching revolves around the teacher, allows educators to collaborate as part of a team and allows teachers to take on leadership roles without leaving the classroom. The method also provides opportunities for the coach to grow and learn as well, he writes.

Leadership teams in Kentucky are responsible for ensuring that school-based educators are prepared to implement the Common Core State Standards, writes Saundra Hamon, assistant director of the Division of Program Standards at the Kentucky Department of Education. She writes in this blog post that each of the state's 16 networks, which include teacher leaders, have formed "a community" with the goal of "shared leadership" -- considered essential as teachers transition to the common core.

The uproar over the ratio of nonfiction and technical reading material in the Common Core State Standards is discussed by college professors Diane Ravitch and Timothy Shanahan in this radio interview. Under the common core, elementary-school students are to read 50% fiction and 50% nonfiction throughout the school day, and by their senior year, 70% of their reading material should be nonfiction. Shanahan, who was an adviser on the creation of the English standards, said students who are reading 80% fiction in school aren't being prepared for the demands of science and history in careers and college, while Ravitch advocates for dropping of the new ratios, calling them arbitrary.

A single-minded focus on skills without teaching knowledge is a strategy that has never worked, writes Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University and co-chairwoman of Common Core. Ravitch argues that schools can't teach 21st-century skills without teaching knowledge. "Until we teach both teachers and students to value knowledge and to love learning, we cannot expect them to use their minds well," she writes.